March 28, 2024
Letter

Humanitarian pursuit

The Oct. 18 edition of the Bangor Daily News tells of legislation being signed that will continue the practice of ignoring the rights of people imprisoned at Guantanamo and continue interrogation practices bordering on torture. An op-ed piece by Molly Irvine details the mistakes of this administration’s policies in regard to North Korea.

The Oct. 17 edition had an op-ed piece by Gwynne Dyer about the numbers of civilians killed in the war in Iraq: “Six-hundred and fifty-five thousand [are] estimated to have died since the invasion in excess of the national death rate.”

I recently finished reading Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.” What are the connections of today’s events with the tragic history of our treatment of Native Americans? The sense of Manifest Destiny, that the United States has the right to rearrange the world to suit its economic interests; the arrogance of those who don’t know or understand the cultural or spiritual history of other people or who don’t believe in the equality of all people and think therefore that those people’s rights don’t matter.

The United States is surely able to return to more noble and humanitarian policies that are respectful of all people and nations, and their desire to obtain peace and prosperity.

Pamela Taylor

Bangor


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